Beading Tips & Techniques | Jewelry Making Tips & Techniques

Learn How To Wire Wrap a Loop

Strong and Beautiful, Wire Wrapped Loops are Simple to Learn

A wrapped loop will provide much more strength than a simple loop which is fairly easy to open. Use them on wire or headpins and eyepins when you want to be sure that the loop will not open.

Tools Needed:

Jewelry wire of a gauge appropriate to your beads - thin (high gauge) wire for more delicate beads like gemstone beads
Round nose pliers
Wire cutters

Step 1

If you are making a wrapped loop on a headpin or eyepin, make sure that the pin is at least 5/8 of an inch longer than the width of your bead(s). If you are wire wrapping on wire and making a loop at both ends, the piece of wire should be about 1 ½ inches longer than the width of the bead(s)

Step 2

Put the bead(s) on the wire so that 5/8 of an inch of the wire is above the bead. Grip the wire with the round-nosed pliers just above the bead as shown.

Step 3

Use your fingers to bend the wire over one side of the jaws until it is perpendicular to the bead.

Step 4
Shift your pliers so that they sit on top of the angle you have just created.

Step 5

Use your fingers to bend the wire back around the jaw of the pliers. Shift your grip as necessary and keep bending the wire until it has formed a complete loop around the pliers’ jaw and is pointing back in the same direction you started with.

Step 6

Now grip the loop as shown with your flat-nosed or round-nosed pliers. NOTE: If you want to attach the wrapped-loop to a ring which cannot be opened, you must do it now before you start wrapping.

Step 7

Use your fingers to wrap the tail of the wire tightly around the wire at the base of the loop.

Step 8
Continue wrapping until all the empty space between the loop and the bead is filled.

Step 9

Use your wire cutters to snip of any remaining tail of the wire.

Step 10

Use your flat-nosed pliers to squeeze in the very end of the wire if it is sticking out.

Step 11

Your wrapped loop should look like this.